Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Linguistics 429
many of these topics have behind them a long history of international research,
and their local oblivion is of short duration. All these items, however, form an
integral part of linguistics and require the same structural analysis as all other
intrinsic constituents of language.
The domain of ethnolinguistics and sociolinguistics - we can but agree with a
farsighted promoter of their program, Dell Hymes - must and, finally, wil be
simply incorporated into linguistics (74, p. 152), because the latter cannot be
separated and isolated from ‘questions of the actual functioning and role of
language in human life’ (72, p. 13).
Any verbal code is convertible and necessarily comprises a set of distinct
subcodes or, in other words, functional varieties of language. Any speech
community has at its disposal a) more explicit and more elliptic patterns, with
an orderly scale of transitions from a maximal explicitness to an extreme
ellipsis, b) a purposive alternation of more archaic and newfangled dictions,
c) a patent difference between rules of ceremonial, formal and informal, slovenly
speech. The areally distinct and manifold sets of rules permitting, prescribing,
or prohibiting talk and silence are destined to serve as a natural preFace to any
veritably generative grammar. Our linguistic performance is, furthermore,
governed by a competence in dialogic and monologic rules. In particular, the
varied verbal relations between the addresser and the addressee build a sub-
stantial part of our linguistic code and border directly upon the grammatical
categories of person and gender. The grammatical and lexical rules relating to
the present or absent differences in the hierarchical standing, sex, and age of the
interlocutors cannot be bypassed in a thorough and accurate scientific descrip-
tion of a given language, and the place of these rules in the total verbal pattern
raises a challenging linguistic question.
The diversity of interlocutors and their mutual adaptability are a factor of
decisive importance for the multiplication and differentiation of subcodes
within a speech community and within the verbal competence of its individual
members. The variable ‘radius of communication’, according to Sapir’s felicitous
term (154, p. IO^), involves an interdialectal and interlingual exchange of
messages and usually creates multidialectal and sometimes multilingual aggregates
and interactions within the verbal pattern of individuals and even of entire
communities. An exact comparison of the usually wider competence of the
individual as hearer and his narrower competence as speaker is a pertinent but
frequently overlooked linguistic task (cf. 68; 177).
Centrifugal and centripetal forces displayed by territorial and social dialects
have been already for many decades a favorite subject in world linguistics. The
recent application of structural analysis to the field work in social dialectology
(92; 93) once more disproves the myth of homogeneous speech communities,
discloses the speakers’ awareness of variations, distinctions, and changes in the
verbal pattern, and, hence, brings new illustrations to our view of metalanguage
as a crucial intralinguistic factor.
The necessity to cope with the problems of standardization and planning
(63; 170), and herewith to put an end to the last superstitious survivals of the
neogrammarian noninterference in the life of language (‘let your language